“For six hundred years Snæfells has been dumb; but he may speak again. Now, eruptions are always preceded by certain well-known phenomena. I have therefore examined the natives, I have studied external appearances, and I can assure you, Axel, that there will be no eruption.”
At this positive affirmation I stood amazed and speechless.
“You don’t doubt my word?” said my uncle. “Well, follow me.”
I obeyed like an automaton. Coming out from the priest’s house, the Professor took a straight road, which, through an opening in the basaltic wall, led away from the sea. We were soon in the open country, if one may give that name to a vast extent of mounds of volcanic products. This tract seemed crushed under a rain of enormous ejected rocks of trap, basalt, granite, and all kinds of igneous rocks.
Here and there I could see puffs and jets of steam curling up into the air, called in Icelandic reykir , issuing from thermal springs, and indicating