_Hekla_ is situated thirty miles from the sea on the south shore of the island. In clear weather it is easily seen from the Westman Islands and is a fine spectacle as it lifts its silvery mass above the great plain. It has two peaks, craters. From these peaks extend northeast and southwest a ridge of lava fifteen miles each. This is the material that has belched from these craters and more recently from the rifts deep down in the side of the mountain. We made the ascent from the west. From the eminence which we had gained we looked over the country traversed during the past three days. The base and the middle slopes are composed of contorted and tangled skeins of lava which flowed at different periods, the more recent ones adapting themselves to the older ridges, sometimes filling the gullies and overflowing, sometimes melting down thin barriers or baking the ridges of ash and rubble into conglomerate, which someone has aptly termed a “geological Irish stew.” The rolling, spreading and twisting of these semi-fluid hot streams, the terrible rough and punctured surface of the lava, the sharp and glass-like angles, the pinnacles and crevasses are better imagined than described. No adequate idea can be obtained till one has made the ascent, till one has had many a fall, cut his hands upon the glass, scoured his boots on the needlepoints, lost his breath and almost lost his temper,—till then he will remain in ignorance of the true condition of _Hekla’s_ horrent surface. Now and again a patch of loose sand or a pocket of snow gives respite from the sharp and angular blocks that menace a cut with every step. The ridge where we left the ponies commands a grand view well worth the ascent to this point, even though the traveller goes no further. Most people who “make the ascent of _Hekla_” go no further than the summit of this ridge, though it is only two-fifths of the elevation of the mountain. We ate a portion of our lunch, cached the remainder in a crevice under a rock, and picked our way as best we could over a tumbled pile of bristling lava for half an hour when we arrived at the snow which was in exceptionally good condition for walking. It lay in a narrow gulch between two steep ridges of rock which extend up to the steepest portion of the mountains. While we are making this easy portion of the climb let us recount a bit of _Hekla’s_ history.