On the Revolutions of Iceland^ Political and Natural. 329 



and in spite of such enormous losses in his wealth and numbers, 

 the Icelander still maintains himself ; because his pastures, the 

 meat, and milk, and wool of his flocks, — the aquatic birds, and 

 the birds of passage, which his gun procures him, — and, most 

 of all, the living treasures of the waters with which every sea- 

 son crowds his rivers, lakes, and the surrounding ocean, sup- 

 ply him with superabounding sources of subsistence, which 

 appear altogether inexhaustible. We speak not here of a few 

 succulent plants which he may associate with these staples of 

 support, augmenting their quantity, and modifying their ef- 

 fects. But we cannot omit to state, that if Iceland is crowded 

 with mountains covered with glaciers, and if these glaciers seem 

 to rise higher, and extend wider from year to year, the soil 

 which forms it, on the other hand, reposes on a vast storehouse 

 of subterranean fire, which everywhere forces itself to the sur- 

 face, and somewhat elevates itself every year above the level of 

 the sea, bringing hot springs to the surface, simple, salt, and 

 sulphureous, whose temperature is so high that they readilv 

 boil meat, and even as it were dissolve it, in a few minutes. 

 Now, it sometimes happens that this heat, in certain districts, 

 is the companion of mountain streams, and the moisture thus 

 added to the heat, clothes the surface of these favoured regions 

 with a rich, savoury, and in some respects a perpetual, vegeta- 

 tion, — a truly astonishing phenomenon in so high a latitude. 

 Whence it may have happened, that, if the antique elephant 

 wliich some thirty years ago was so unexpectedly discovered 

 in a great glacier in the northern coast of Siberia, may be con- 

 sidered as a representative of the organization which preceded 

 the appearance of man on the globe, it would be only natural 

 also to consider these portions of favoured land in Iceland, as 

 a representation of those vast continents which were covered 

 with forests, and consequently always endowed with heat, which 

 were the dwelling places of the innumerable legions of those 

 stupendous animals. But be this as it may, such is the strik- 

 ing contrast which travellers here perceive. At first view, 

 Iceland, naked, scraggy, sad, like the cloudy sky which covers 

 it, and whitened only by the cold sheets of snow and ice which 

 envelope it, — without verdure, without vegetation, where the 

 eye scarcely discovers a few thinly scattered habitations, sickens 



