Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 72.djvu/92

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Then it dips and drops into the hidden crevice somewhere below your feet, reappearing in the constricted throat below in awful commotion. As it drops, the dashed, splintered, pulverized masses of water send up sheets of vibrating particles from which the sun evokes a galaxy of rainbows.

The basalt rock is here seen in two series—an upper and lower—and these seem separated by slaty material. This last is, however, igneous in nature, though, peeked at from the overhanging cliff, it curiously resembles a conglomerate in spots, becoming, however, near the falls, columnar. There are curved heavy columns, and parallel and converging columns, in the rock at upper points of radiation in the lower flow. The top flow is divided from the lower by an interbedded formation, which also has a sedimentary appearance. The flows are well marked and the basaltic columns well developed.

We turned our ponies backward. It really seemed as if the great wonders of Iceland were only beginning. Heckla was abandoned for want of time, and we returned regretfully to Reykjavik.

The present-day Icelander has felt the stirring agencies which