Chapter 14

CHAPTER XIV.

BUT ARCTICS CAN BE INHOSPITABLE, TOO

Stapi is a village consisting of about thirty huts, built of lava, atthe south side of the base of the volcano. It extends along the inneredge of a small fiord, inclosed between basaltic walls of thestrangest construction.

Basalt is a brownish rock of igneous origin. It assumes regularforms, the arrangement of which is often very surprising. Here naturehad done her work geometrically, with square and compass and plummet.Everywhere else her art consists alone in throwing down huge massestogether in disorder. You see cones imperfectly formed, irregularpyramids, with a fantastic disarrangement of lines; but here, as ifto exhibit an example of regularity, though in advance of the veryearliest architects, she has created a severely simple order ofarchitecture, never surpassed either by the splendours of Babylon orthe wonders of Greece.

I had heard of the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, and Fingal's Cave inStaffa, one of the Hebrides; but I had never yet seen a basalticformation.

At Stapi I beheld this phenomenon in all its beauty.

The wall that confined the fiord, like all the coast of thepeninsula, was composed of a series of vertical columns thirty feethigh. These straight shafts, of fair proportions, supported anarchitrave of horizontal slabs, the overhanging portion of whichformed a semi-arch over the sea. At. intervals, under this naturalshelter, there spread out vaulted entrances in beautiful curves, intowhich the waves came dashing with foam and spray. A few shafts ofbasalt, torn from their hold by the fury of tempests, lay along thesoil like remains of an ancient temple, in ruins for ever fresh, andover which centuries passed without leaving a trace of age upon them.

This was our last stage upon the earth. Hans had exhibited greatintelligence, and it gave me some little comfort to think then thathe was not going to leave us.

On arriving at the door of the rector's house, which was notdifferent from the others, I saw a man shoeing a horse, hammer inhand, and with a leathern apron on.

"_Sællvertu,_" said the hunter.

"_God dag,_" said the blacksmith in good Danish.

"_Kyrkoherde,_" said Hans, turning round to my uncle.

"The rector," repeated the Professor. "It seems, Axel, that this goodman is the rector."

Our guide in the meanwhile was making the 'kyrkoherde' aware of theposition of things; when the latter, suspending his labours for amoment, uttered a sound no doubt understood between horses andfarriers, and immediately a tall and ugly hag appeared from the hut.She must have been six feet at the least. I was in great alarm lestshe should treat me to the Icelandic kiss; but there was no occasionto fear, nor did she do the honours at all too gracefully.

The visitors' room seemed to me the worst in the whole cabin. It wasclose, dirty, and evil