68 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [VII. 



bees clustering over the mountain. One boulder of pumice 

 six feet in circumference was pitched twenty miles away ; 

 another of magnetic iron fell at a distance of fifteen. The 

 surface of the earth was covered, for a circuit of one hundred 

 and fifty miles, with a layer of sand four inches deep ; the 

 air was so darkened by it, that at a place one hundred and 

 forty miles off, white paper held up at a little distance could 

 not be distinguished from black. The fishermen could not 

 put to sea on account of the darkness, and the inhabitants 

 of the Orkney islands were frightened out of their senses by 

 showers of what they thought must be black snow. On the 

 9th of April, the lava began to overflow, and ran for five 

 miles in a south-westerly direction, whilst, some days later, — 

 in order that no element might be wanting to mingle in this 

 devil's charivari, — a vast column of water, like Robin Hood's 

 second arrow, split up through the cinder pillar to the height 

 of several hundred feet ; the horror of the spectacle being 

 further enhanced by an accompaniment of subterranean can- 

 nonading and dire reports, heard at a distance of fifty miles. 



Striking as all this must have been, it sinks into compara- 

 tive tameness and insignificance, beside the infinitely more 

 terrible phenomena which attended the eruption of another 

 volcano, called Skapta Jokul. 



Of all countries in Europe, Iceland is the one which has 

 been the most minutely mapped, not even excepting the 

 ordnance survey of Ireland. The Danish Government seem 

 to have had a hobby about it, and the result has been a 

 chart so beautifully executed, that every little crevice, each 

 mountain torrent, each flood of lava, is laid down with an 

 accuracy perfectly astonishing. One huge blank, however, 

 in the south-west corner of this map of Iceland, mars the 

 integrity of its almost microscopic delineations. To every 

 other part of the island the engineer has succeeded in pene- 

 trating ; one vast space alone of about four hundred square 

 miles has defied his investigation. Over the area occupied 

 by the Skapta Jokul, amid its mountain-cradled fields of 

 snow and icy ridges, no human foot has ever wandered. Yet 



