elf, that is to say, his
uncles, his cousins--german, who offered us hospitality. We were
exceedingly well received, and without taking too much advantage of the
goodness of these worthy people, I should have liked very much to have
rested with them after the fatigues of the journey. But my uncle, who
did not require rest, had no idea of anything of the kind; and despite
the fact that next day was Sunday, I was compelled once more to mount my
steed.

The soil was again affected by the neighborhood of the mountains, whose
granite peered out of the ground like tops of an old oak. We were
skirting the enormous base of the mighty volcano. My uncle never took
his eyes from off it; he could not keep from gesticulating, and looking
at it with a kind of sullen defiance as much as to say "That is the
giant I have made up my mind to conquer."

After four hours of steady traveling, the horses stopped of themselves
before the door of the presbytery of Stapi.

CHAPTER 11

WE REACH MOUNT SNEFFELS--THE "REYKIR"

Stapi is a town consisting of thirty huts, built on a large plain of
lava, exposed to the rays of the sun, reflected from the volcano. It
stretches its humble tenements along the end of a little fjord,
surrounded by a basaltic wall of the most singular character.

Basalt is a brown rock of igneous origin. It assumes regular forms,
which astonish by their singular appearance. Here we found Nature
proceeding geometrically, and working quite after a human fashion, as if
she had employed the plummet line, the compass and the rule. If
elsewhere she produces grand artistic effects by piling up huge masses
without order or connection--if elsewhere we see truncated cones,
imperfect pyramids, with an odd succession of lines; here, as if wishing
to give a lesson in regularity, and preceding the architects of the
early ages, she has erected a severe order of architecture, which
neither the splendors of Babylon nor the marvels of Greece ever
surpassed.

I had often heard of the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, and of Fingal's
Cave in one of the Hebrides, but the grand spectacle of a real basaltic
formation had never yet come before my eyes.

This at Stapi gave us an idea of one in all its wonderful beauty and
grace.

The wall of the fjord, like nearly the whole of the peninsula, consisted
of a series of vertical columns, in height about thirty feet. These
upright pillars of stone, of the finest proportions, supported an
a