VII.] SKAPTA JOKUL. 69 



it is from the bosom of this desert district that has descended 

 the most frightful visitation ever known to have desolated 

 the island. 



This event occurred in the year 1783. The preceding 

 winter and spring had been unusually mild. Toward the 

 end of May, a light bluish fog began to float along the con- 

 fines of the untrodden tracts of Skapta, accompanied in the 

 beginning of June by a great trembling of the earth. On the 

 8th of that month, immense pillars of smoke collected over 

 the hill country towards the north, and coming down against 

 the wind in a southerly direction, enveloped the whole dis- 

 trict of Sida in darkness. A whirlwind of ashes then swept 

 over the face of the country, and on the 10th, innumerable 

 fire spouts were seen leaping and flaring amid the icy hollows 

 of the mountain, while the river Skapta, one of the largest 

 in the island, having first rolled down to the plain a vast 

 volume of fetid waters mixed with sand, suddenly disappeared. 



Two days afterwards a stream of lava, issuing from sources 

 to which no one has ever been able to penetrate, came slid- 

 ing down the bed of the dried-up river, and in a little time, 

 — though the channel was six hundred feet deep and two 

 hundred broad, — the glowing deluge overflowed its banks, 

 crossed the low country of Medalland, ripping the turf up 

 before it like a table-cloth, and poured into a great lake whose 

 affrighted waters flew hissing and screaming into the air at 

 the approach of the fiery intruder. Within a few more days 

 the basin of the lake itself was completely filled, and having 

 separated into two streams, the unexhausted torrent again 

 recommenced its march ; in one direction overflowing some 

 ancient lava fields, — in the other, re-entering the channel of 

 the Skapta, and leaping down the lofty cataract of Stapafoss. 

 But this was not all ; while one lava flood had chosen the 

 Skapta for its bed, another, descending in a different direc- 

 tion, was working like ruin within and on either side the 

 banks of the Hverfisfliot, rushing into the plain, by all ac- 

 counts, with even greater fury and velocity. Whether the 

 two issued from the same crater it is impossible to say, as 



