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Yet here and there were a few jets of steam from hot springs. We had no time to watch these phenomena; we had to proceed on our way. Soon at the foot of the mountains the boggy land reappeared, intersected by little lakes. Our route now lay westward; we had turned the great bay of Faxa, and the twin peaks of Snæfell rose white into the cloudy sky at the distance of at least five miles.
The town lies on a flat and marshy plain, between two hills. A vast field of lava skirts it on one side, falling away in terraces towards the sea. On the other hand is the large bay of Faxa, bordered on the north by the enormous glacier of Sneffels, and in which bay the <i>Valkyrie</i> was then the only vessel at anchor.
Forty-eight hours after, coming out of a storm which forced the schooner to scud under bare poles, we sighted east of us the beacon on Cape Skagen, where dangerous rocks extend far away seaward. An Icelandic pilot came on board, and in three hours the Valkyria dropped her anchor before Rejkiavik, in Faxa Bay.
In the assembly rooms forming one with the central hall will take place the deliberations of the syndic chambers. The walls of the hall will, ere long, receive decorative paintings. Roofing paper was first used in Scandinavia early as the last century, the invention being accredited to Faxa, an official of the Swedish Admiralty. The first tar and gravel roofs in Sweden were very defective.
So Medea in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Stantia concutio cantu freta; nubila pello, Nubilaque induco, ventos abigoque, vocoque; Vivaque faxa sua convulsaque robora terra Et sylvas moveo; jubeoque tremiscere montes, Et mugire solum, manesque exire sepulchris.
Our journey was now in a westerly direction; we had, in fact, swept round the great bay of Faxa, and the twin white summits of Sneffels rose to the clouds at a distance of less than five miles. The horses now advanced rapidly. The accidents and difficulties of the soil no longer checked them.
Forty-eight hours later, after a storm which drove us far to sea under bare poles, we came once more in sight of land, and were boarded by a pilot, who, after three hours of dangerous navigation, brought the schooner safely to an anchor in the bay of Faxa before Reykjavik. My uncle came out of his cabin pale, haggard, thin, but full of enthusiasm, his eyes dilated with pleasure and satisfaction.
The town extends along a low and marshy level, between two hills. An immense bed of lava bounds it on one side, and falls gently towards the sea. On the other extends the vast bay of Faxa, shut in at the north by the enormous glacier of the Snæfell, and of which the Valkyria was for the time the only occupant.
The panorama of the bay of Faxa Fiord is magnificent, with a width of fifty miles from horn to horn, the one running down into a rocky ridge of pumice, the other towering to the height of five thousand feet in a pyramid of eternal snow, while round the intervening semicircle crowd the peaks of a hundred noble mountains.
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