"
On her way down our traveller discovered that the snow had not melted for
the first five or six hundred feet. Below that distance the mountain-
sides were enveloped in a shroud of vapour. That glossy, coal-black,
shining lava, which is never porous, can be found only at Hekla and in
its immediate vicinity; but the other varieties, jagged, porous, and
vitrified, are also met with, though they are invariably black, as is the
sand which covers the side of the mountain. As the distance from the
volcano increases, the lava loses its jet-black colour, and fades into an
iron-gray.
After an absence of twelve hours, Madame Pfeiffer reached Salsun in
safety.
Six-and-twenty eruptions of Hekla have been recorded,--the last having
occurred in 1845-46. One was prolonged for a period of six years,
spreading desolation over a country which had formerly been the seat of a
prosperous settlement, and burying the cultivated fields beneath a flood
of lava, scoriae, and ashes. During the eruption of 1845-46, three new
crater-vents were formed, from which sprang columns of fire and smoke to
the height of 14,000 feet. The lava accumulated in formidable masses,
and fragments of scoriae and pumice-stone weighing two hundredweight were
thrown to a distance of a league and a half; while the ice and snow which
had lain on the mountain for centuries were liquefied, and rolled in
devastating torrents over the plains.
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