On the Revolutions of Iceland, Political and Natural, 327 



established themselves as the sovereigns of the island. Thus 

 anarchy was the cause of the loss of independence ; and Iceland 

 experienced the fate of Greenland, and even of Norway itself, 

 which was subordinated to the sceptre of Denmark. 



To these political revolutions, so destructive of all prosperity, 

 were added the still more awful revolutions of nature. Volca- 

 nos were kindled in various parts of the island. They blazed 

 forth sometimes singly, sometimes together; and then was ef- 

 fected, in the interior, and upon the surface of this devoted spot, 

 agitated to its very centre, a universal convulsion. Rivers 

 changed their courses, mountains their places. Yawning rents 

 appeared every where, now beneath the beds of rivers, and now 

 below the waves of the ocean. From these there issued gases,suf- 

 focating and deleterious ; either inflammable, which blazed over 

 the extent of many leagues ; or dense white columns of steam, 

 which were instantaneously projected to the height of 80, 100, 

 and even 200 feet, carrying along with them great black rocks, 

 which fell down again with a fearful crash. Islands were up- 

 raised in the middle of the ocean, like the island of Graham, and, 

 like it, these islands again sank in the abyss. The forests were 

 overturned ; those beautiful forests, so much boasted of in the 

 Sagas, were laid prostrate, and buried in morasses, whence they 

 may now be obtained as great fossil trees. The cultivated 

 lands were covered over with ashes and lava ; and great farms 

 and whole villages were overwhelmed and engulfed, with all 

 their cattle and inhabitants. Whatever was spared by these 

 fearful fires, and these subterranean watery eruptions, other 

 agents destroyed. Furious hurricanes, great avalanches, vast 

 slips or falling of mountains, with dreadful thunder-storms, to- 

 gether with pestilences among men, and murrains among cat- 

 tle, including the eastern plague, which, in the year 1348, in- 

 vaded and ravaged the whole world, nearly completed its 

 destruction. Finally, to finish the melancholy picture, enor- 

 mous rocks of floating ice, those great glaciers which cover and 

 obstruct the Northern Ocean, which ever threaten the frail 

 barks of man, whose resolution, notwithstanding, dares to brave 

 them, those huge masses, carried along by the currents, find a 

 barrier upon the northern coast of Iceland. These are some- 

 times crowded with the great white bear, which, at considerable 



