Many of them were upwards of 4 feet high, generally sharpened at the extremity, and about 2 feet in thickness.

A more brilliant scene perhaps never presented itself to the human eye, nor was it easy for us to divest ourselves of the idea that we actually beheld one of the fairy scenes depicted in Eastern fable.

The light of the torches rendered it peculiarly enchanting.' Captain Forbes found much ice on the floor, but he did not enjoy the cold and wet, and seems to have ascended by the last opening in the roof, mentioned by Olafsen, before reaching the cavern where the more beautiful parts of the ice-decoration were found by his predecessors.
The two engravings of the interior of the cave given in his book are copied from the magnificent lithographs of Paul Gaimard,[110] but much of the effect has been lost in the process of copying.
Mr.Baring Gould mentions this cavern in his book on Iceland, and believes that its interest has been much overrated.

He seems to have visited the cave, but makes no allusion to the existence of ice.[111] Mr.E.T.Holland visited the Surtshellir in the course of his tour in Iceland, in 1861, and an account of his visit is given in the first volume of 'Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers.'[112] After following in Olafsen's steps for some time, the party reached a cave whose floor was composed of very clear ice, apparently of great thickness, for they could not see the lava beneath it.

The walking on this smooth ice-floor Mr.Holland describes as being delightful, the whole sloping considerably downwards.