Читать книгу Little Folks of North America - Mary Hazelton Blanchard Wade - Страница 7

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There are many caves in Iceland, some of which are used by the farmers for storing their hay and housing their cattle. The most wonderful of them all is the large cave of Surtur, whose floor is carpeted with snow and ice.

The visitor enters a long hall and the dim light of his torch makes him think at first that he is looking at rows of statues. But they are pillars of ice and snow which reach up from the floor and have taken upon themselves many queer forms. Farther on in the hall bars of ice form a large screen before the eyes of the traveler. On every side new wonders meet his eyes as he goes farther and farther underground till at last he longs for the daylight and turns back, glad indeed when he has reached the mouth of the cave once more.

Many people who have visited Iceland say that the grandest sights in the whole world are to be seen in that island. The hills of lava with the ice-fields stretching between them, the geysers bursting forth out of the ground with a sound of thunder, the lofty volcanoes that look like sleeping giants of snow and ice, the great caves whose stalactites are coated with ice, all these things and many more make Iceland a land of wonder to those who visit that lonely island.