Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-09-20

Iceland in point Of size, ranks fourteenth
among the islands of the world. having an
area of 1910 square miles. 1t is larger
than Ireland by one-sixth, and only lit
tie smaller than Newfoundland. Our new
possession of Luzon. in the Philippines,
is larger by almost three thousand square
miles. while Mindanao ranks next to Ice
land in size, being only slightly larger than
Iceland. Tasmania, Ceylon, FOrmosa,
Sicily and other famous islands are far
smaller, while Hawaii, Jamaica and Cor
slca are only about one-tenth of the size
of Iceland.
Yet in all this vast extent are only eighty
thousand people, according to the most
liberal census, or about two to the square
mile. Where even these eighty thousand
live is mystery to the traveller, since he
may journey for fifty miles in some direc-
lions without seeing man, woman or child.
While we have been coming these sta
tistics, which the easy jogging of our po-
MES make possible, scenes of grandeur and
sublimity open in every direction. Huge,
fire-scarred mountain SUBMITS rise, one
above the other Mount Hecla, at one
point, peers, snow capped, above its sister
mountains, and great Jokulrs elevated
plains of ice suddenly come into view,
gistening like marble mountains in the
sun
About twenty-five miles from Reykjavik,
Thingvellie lake. a beautiful body of blue
water twenty miles long, comes in sight,
rejecting in its crystal depths the frowning
mountains tHdt OVeTndng 1t.
A Two-Mile Rift.
Suddenly, without warning, the road en-
tiers narrow defile; the ragged rocks tower
on either hand for nearly hundred feet,
with their black preciptous walls, and we
realize that we have entered the famous
Almannagja or "All-mens-rift," by which
the Althing or Icelandic parliament a
thousand years ago entered as their unique
meeting place under the open sky, on the
green sward-the grandest and most Won
derful house of parliament in all the world
This rift is two miles long, with precipl-
tous walls of rock on either side, in many
places nearly one hundred feet high, while
over them in one place dashes a sparkling
waterfall, so cold and clear and free from
vegetable substance that even the trout,
the lovers of cold, bright streams, cannot
live in 1t.
Down a steep descent our ponies trot, with
the inclosng walls of frowning black rock
so close on either hand that one could
almost touch them in places with out
stretched arm, until we come out on an
open plain, some three miles wide by four
in length.
Within this wonderful rock-ribbed in
closure have the greatest deeds of Iceland
been enacted. Here her laws were made
and proclaimed and some of them executed.
Here, for hundreds of years, her legislators
came to discuss and wrangle and to fight
words, while thousands of the adherents
of the old chiefs gathered to witness me
fights or to take part in them.
This is the spot chiefly celebrated in
Saga and Edda, in chronicle and poem.
Every inch of soil is sacred to the true Ice
lander, and every jutting rock bristles with
memories of daring and prowess.
In all the world no more picturesque spot
could be chosen for these annual delibera-
lions and these annual wars of words and
weapons. All-mens-rift is not alone, but
in every direction the earth is rent and
scanned with mighty chasms, sometimes
sixty or eighty feet deep. with water twice
as deep, clear and icy cold at the bottom.
The general trend of these riffs is the
same, from northeast to southwest.
Scores of these riffs are seen, some so
small that a boy can leap across them,
others wide enough to float man-of-war in
the water at their murky depths. Evident
ly in the cooling process of the prehistoric
ages when Iceland was a mass of molten,
seething lava the top cooled more rapidly
than the bottom and sprung apart, leaving
these great assures on the face Of nature,
while in later ages a great underground
stream from the glaciers near made It's way
beneath them, filling many of the riffs ard
flowing silently into Thingvellie lake, never
coming to the light of day except In some
Of these dark caverns.
About a quarter of a mile from All-mens-
rift is another parallel rift only sunk be-
meath the surface for two hundred feet H..
stead Of rising above it. This rift divides