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Journey to the Center of the Earth
Chapter 12. THE ASCENT OF MOUNT SNEFFELS
The huge volcano which was the first stage of our daring experiment is above five thousand feet high.
Sneffels is the end of a long range of volcanic mountains, different in character from the system of the island itself.
One of its peculiarities is its two huge pointed summits.
From where we started it was impossible to make out the real outlines of the peak against the grey field of sky.
All we could see was a vast dome of white, which fell downwards from the head of the giant.
The beginning of the great undertaking filled me with awe.
Now that we'd actually started, I began to believe in the reality of the plan!
Our party formed quite a procession, we walked in single file, led by Hans, the calm eider-duck hunter.
He quietly guided us along narrow paths where two people couldn't walk side by side.
Conversation was impossible, we had more chance to think and admire the terrible grandeur of the scene around.
Beyond the strong basalt wall of the fjord of Stapi, we found ourselves making our way through fibrous turf.
Sparse grass grew over it, the remains of the ancient vegetation of the swampy peninsula.
The vast mass of this fuel, the field of which is as yet almost unexplored, would be enough to warm Iceland for a whole century.
This mighty turf pit, measured from the bottom of certain ravines, is often not less than seventy feet deep.
It shows layers of black burned-up rocky debris separated by thin streaks of porous sandstone.
The grandeur of the sight was obvious, as well as its dry and deserted air.
As a true nephew of the great Professor Hardwigg, I was full of worry and sad fears about what was to come.
Despite this, I observed with great interest the large collection of mineral curiosities.
They were spread out before me in this great museum of natural history.
Looking back to my recent studies, I went over in thought the whole geological history of Iceland.
This strange and curious island must have appeared from out of the great world of waters at a comparatively recent date.
Like the coral islands of the Pacific, it may, for all we know, still be rising by slow and almost invisible degrees.
If this is really the case, its origin can be put down to only one cause, the continued action of fires inside the earth.
This was a happy thought, and it lightened my spirits for the moment.
If so, if this were true, away with the theories of Sir Humphry Davy and the authority of the parchment of Arne Saknussemm.
Away with the wonderful claims to discovery on the part of my uncle and our journey!
In the end, everything must end in smoke, I thought with bitter certainty.
Charmed by the idea, I began to look more carefully.
A serious study of the soil was necessary to reject or confirm my hypothesis.
I took in every detail of what I saw.
And I began to understand the order of events which had led to its formation.
Iceland, having no sedimentary soil, is made only of volcanic tufa, that's to say, of a mixture of stones and rocks of a porous texture.
Long before volcanoes existed, it was a solid body of massive trap rock.
It was slowly lifted out of the sea by the action of forces at work in the earth.
The fires inside, however, hadn't yet burst their bounds and flooded the outer layer of Mother Earth with hot and raging lava.
My readers must excuse this short and rather pedantic geological lecture.
But it's necessary to fully understand what follows.
Later in the world's history, a huge fissure must have formed diagonally from the southwest to the northeast of the island.
Through it, by degrees, flowed the volcanic crust.
The great and wonderful event then went on without violence.
The outpouring was enormous.
The seething melted matter ejected from the bowels of the earth spread slowly and peacefully into vast level plains called mamelons or mounds.
It was at this time that the rocks called feldspars, syenites, and porphyries appeared.
But as a natural consequence of this overflow, the height of the island increased.
You can readily believe what an enormous quantity of elastic fluids were piled up within its centre.
This happened when, after the crust had cooled, it finally had no other openings.
At length a time came when, despite the heavy upper crust, the mechanical forces of the combustible gases below grew overwhelmingly strong.
They actually lifted the heavy back and made for themselves huge shafts.
Hence the volcanoes which suddenly rose through the upper crust, and next the craters, which burst forth at the summit of these new creations.
It'll be seen that the first events connected with the formation of the island were simply eruptive, to these shortly succeeded the volcanic phenomena.
Through the newly formed openings escaped the strange mass of basalt stones with which the plain we were now crossing was covered.
We were walking over heavy rocks of dark grey color, which, while cooling, had been shaped into six-sided prisms.
In the distance we could see a number of flattened cones, which formerly were so many fire-vomiting mouths.
After the basalt eruption had calmed, the volcano, its force rising with the extinct craters, gave free passage to the fiery lava.
A mass of cinders and pumice stone was scattered over the sides of the mountain like loose hair on the shoulders of a Bacchante.
Here, in a few words, I had the whole history of the events from which Iceland arose.
All start in the fierce action of interior fires.
To think that the central mass did not remain a white-hot liquid was simply and purely madness.
This being proved, what foolish idea to pretend to go into the interior of the mighty earth!
This mental lecture to myself while going on a journey did me good.
I was reassured about our enterprise's fate, and, like a soldier mounting a rough battery, went to the assault of old Sneffels.
As we went on, the road became more and more difficult, the soil was broken and dangerous.
The rocks broke and gave way under our feet, and we had to be very careful to avoid dangerous and frequent falls.
Hans went forward as calmly as if he had been walking over Salisbury Plain.
Sometimes he'd disappear behind huge blocks of stone, and we'd lose sight of him.
There was a short period of anxiety and then there was a sharp whistle, just to tell us where to look for him.
Sometimes he'd stop to pick up lumps of rock and pile them into small heaps to help us find our way back.
He had no idea of the journey we were about to take.
At any rate, the precaution was a good one, though how utterly useless and unnecessary, I mustn't say too soon.
Three hours of terrible fatigue, walking without stopping, had only brought us to the foot of the great mountain.
This will give some idea of what we had still to go through.
Suddenly Hans cried halt, made signs, and a simple breakfast was laid out on the lava before us.
My uncle, who now was simply Professor Hardwigg, was so eager to go on, that he ate his food like a greedy clown.
This stop for refreshment was also a stop for rest.
The Professor was therefore forced to wait the good pleasure of his calm guide, who didn't give the sign for departure for a full hour.
The three Icelanders, who were as silent as their comrade, didn't say a word, but went on eating and drinking very quietly.
From this, our first real stage, we began to climb the slopes of the Sneffels volcano.
Its magnificent snowy cap, as we began to call it, by an optical trick very common in mountains, appeared to me to be close at hand.
And yet how many long weary hours must pass before we reached its summit, What unheard-of fatigue must we endure!
The stones on the mountain side were held together by no cement of soil and bound by no roots or creeping herbs.
They fell away continually under our feet and rushed down into the plains like a series of small avalanches.
In certain places the sides of this huge mountain were so steep that it was impossible to climb upwards.
And we had to go round these obstacles as best we could.
Those who understand Alpine climbing will know our difficulties.
Often we had to help each other along by using our climbing poles.
I must say this for my uncle, that he stuck as close to me as possible.
He never lost sight of me, and on many occasions his arm gave me firm and solid support.
He was strong, wiry, and seemed not to feel fatigue.
Another great advantage with him was that he had a natural sense of balance, for he never slipped or missed his steps.
The Icelanders, though heavily loaded, climbed with the skill of mountaineers.
Looking up at the great volcano Sneffels, it seemed impossible to reach the summit on that side.
This was especially true if the angle of the slope didn't soon change.
Luckily, after an hour of great fatigue and gymnastic work that would have been hard for an acrobat, we reached a vast field of ice.
It completely surrounded the bottom of the cone of the volcano.
The natives called it the tablecloth, perhaps as people at the Cape of Good Hope call Table Mountain and Table Bay.
Here, to our surprise, we found an actual flight of stone steps, which greatly helped our climb.
This odd flight of stairs was, like everything else, volcanic.
It had been formed by one of those torrents of stones thrown up by eruptions, and of which the Icelandic name is stina.
If this torrent had not been stopped by the shape of the mountain's flanks, it would have swept into the sea.
It would also have formed new islands.
As it was, it served us well.
The steepness of the slopes increased at times.
These remarkable stone steps were a simple natural means that let us continue, a little easier than the Egyptian pyramids.
About seven in the evening, after climbing two thousand rough steps, we found ourselves overlooking a spur of the mountain.
It was a sort of buttress on which the conelike crater, properly so called, leaned for support.
The ocean lay below us at a depth of more than three thousand two hundred feet, a grand and mighty sight.
We had reached the region of eternal snows.
The cold was sharp, cutting and strong.
The wind blew with extraordinary force, I was utterly exhausted.
My worthy uncle, the Professor, saw clearly that my legs refused further service, and that, in fact, I was utterly spent.
Despite his hot and feverish impatience, he decided, with a sigh, to stop.
He called the eider-duck hunter to his side, that worthy, however, shook his head.
"Ofvanfor," was his only spoken reply.
"It appears," says my uncle with a woebegone look, "that we must go higher."
He then turned to Hans, and asked him to give some reason for this decisive answer.
"Mistour," replied the guide.
"Ja, mistour, yes, the mistour," cried one of the Icelandic guides in a terrified tone.
It was the first time he had spoken.
"What does this mysterious word mean?" I anxiously asked.
"Look," said my uncle.
I looked down upon the plain below.
I saw a vast prodigious volume of powdered pumice, sand, and dust rising to the heavens like a mighty waterspout.
It looked like the fearful phenomenon of the same kind known to travelers in the desert of the great Sahara.
The wind was driving it directly towards that side of Sneffels on which we were perched.
This thick veil standing up between us and the sun threw a deep shadow on the flanks of the mountain.
If this sand spout broke over us, we'd all be certainly destroyed, crushed in its fearful embrace.
This strange phenomenon, very common when the wind shakes the glaciers and sweeps over the dry plains, is in the Icelandic tongue called "mistour."
"Hastigt, hastigt!" cried our guide.
Now I certainly knew nothing of Danish, but I fully understood that his gestures were meant to hurry us.
The guide turned quickly in a direction which would take us to the back of the crater, all the while going up a little.
We followed quickly, despite our great fatigue.
A quarter of an hour later Hans paused to let us look back.
The mighty whirlwind of sand was spreading up the slope of the mountain to the very spot where we had planned to stop.
Huge stones were lifted, thrown into the air, and tossed about as during an eruption.
We were happily a little out of the line of the wind, and therefore out of reach of danger.
But for our guide's care and knowledge, our broken bodies and crushed limbs would have been blown away like dust from a meteor.
Hans, however, didn't think it wise to pass the night on the bare side of the cone.
We therefore continued our journey in a zigzag direction.
The fifteen hundred feet that remained took us at least five hours.
The turnings and windings, the dead ends, the marches and marches, turned that small distance into at least three leagues.
I never felt such misery, fatigue and exhaustion in my life.
I was ready to faint from hunger and cold.
The thin air at the same time painfully pressed on my lungs.
At last, about eleven at night, when I thought myself at my last gasp, we reached the summit of Mount Sneffels!
I was in an awful mood of mind.
Despite my fatigue, I paused before going down into the crater that was to shelter us for the night.
I watched the sun rise at midnight on the very day of its lowest decline.
I enjoyed the sight of its ghastly pale rays on the isle sleeping at our feet.
I no longer wondered at people traveling all the way from England to Norway to see this magical and wonderful sight.