Kitabı oku: «Путешествие к центру Земли / A Journey to the Centre of the Earth», sayfa 10
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Sneffels is 5,000 feet high. From our starting point we could see the two peaks boldly projected against the dark grey sky; I could see an enormous cap of snow.
After we had passed the basaltic wall of the fiord of Stapi we passed over a vegetable fibrous peat bog. As a true nephew of the Professor Liedenbrock, I constructed for myself a complete geological account of Iceland.
This most curious island has evidently come from the bottom of the sea. Iceland, which is entirely devoid of alluvial soil57, is wholly composed of volcanic tufa, an agglomeration of porous rocks and stones. We were moving over grey rocks of dense and massive formation. Everywhere around us we saw truncated cones.
The way was growing more and more arduous, the ascent steeper and steeper; the loose fragments of rock trembled beneath us, and the utmost care was needed to avoid dangerous falls.
Three hours’ fatiguing march had only brought us to the base of the mountain. We were now beginning to scale the steep sides of Sneffels. The stones rolled away from under our feet, and rushed down the precipice below.
At some places the flanks of the mountain formed an angle with the horizon of at least 36 degrees; it was impossible to climb them. We helped each other with our sticks.
Fortunately, after an hour of fatigue and athletic exercises, a kind of staircase appeared unexpectedly. It was formed by one of the torrents of stones. It did us good service. These stone steps allowed us to rise with facility.
At seven we had ascended the two thousand steps of this grand staircase, and we had attained a bulge in the mountain, a kind of bed on which rested the cone proper of the crater.
Three thousand two hundred feet below us stretched the sea. We had passed the limit of perpetual snow. The cold was excessively keen. The wind was blowing violently. I was exhausted.
We continued our zigzag climb. The fifteen hundred remaining feet took us five hours to clear. I could stand it no longer. I was dying from hunger and cold.
At last, at eleven in the sunlight night, the summit of Sneffels was reached.
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Supper was rapidly prepared, and our little company housed ourselves as best we could. Our shelter was at five thousand feet above the sea level. The bed was hard but I slept particularly well; it was one of the best nights I had ever had, and I did not even dream.
Next morning we awoke half frozen. I rose from my granite bed and went out to enjoy the magnificent spectacle that lay before me.
I stood on the very summit of the southernmost of Sneffels’s peaks. I could see deep valleys, precipices like low walls, lakes reduced to ponds, rivers abbreviated into streams. On my right were numberless glaciers and innumerable peaks.
I was forgetting where and who I was. I felt intoxicated with the sublime pleasure of lofty elevations. But I was brought back to the reality by the arrival of Hans and the Professor, who joined me on the summit.
My uncle shot a triumphant glance at me.
“Now for the crater!” he cried.
The crater of Sneffels resembled an inverted cone58. Its depth appeared to be about two thousand feet. Involuntarily I compared the whole crater to an enormous erected mortar, and the comparison put me in a terrible fright.
“What madness,” I thought, “to go down into a mortar, perhaps a loaded mortar, to be shot up into the air!”
In order to facilitate the descent, Hans went down the cone by a spiral path. At mid-day we arrived. I raised my head and saw straight above me the upper aperture of the cone.
At the bottom of the crater were three chimneys, through which, in its eruptions, Sneffels had driven forth fire and lava from its central furnace. Each of these chimneys was a hundred feet in diameter. I had not the courage to look down either of them.
Suddenly my uncle uttered a cry.
“Axel, Axel,” he cried. “Come, come!”
I ran. Hans and the Icelanders did not move.
“Look!” cried the Professor.
And I read on the western face of the block, in Runic characters, this thrice-accursed 59name:
