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Our ride back to Thingvalla was over the same trail which we had traveled on the preceding day, with the exception of a short cut to the right of the Tintron rock. We made very good speed, and reached the Parsonage early in the afternoon. During our absence a young Englishman had arrived from the North, where he had been living for a year.
After having allowed us sufficient time to admire the prospect Sigurdr turned to the left, along the edge of the precipice, until we reached a narrow pathway accidentally formed down a longitudinal niche in the splintered face of the cliff, which led across the bottom, and up the opposite side of the Gja, into the plain of Thingvalla.
At the distance of about a mile up the "Jau" a river tumbles over the upper wall of lava, and rushes down the main fissure for a few hundred yards, when it suddenly diverges and breaks through a gap in the inferior wall, and comes down the valley on the outside toward the lake. During my stay at Thingvalla I walked up to this part of the Almannajau, and made a rough sketch of the waterfall.
Rugged mountains rise from its shores in various directions, and islands reflect their varied outlines in its glassy surface. Cranes, wild ducks, plovers, and occasionally swans, abound in the lagoons that open into it from Thingvalla. The bed of this fine sheet of water corresponds in its configuration with the surrounding country.
Herr Beck, the clergyman at Thingvalla, offered me the shelter of his hut for the night; as the building, however, did not look much more promising than the peasants' cottages by which it was surrounded, I preferred quartering myself in the church, permission to do so being but too easily obtained on all occasions.
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