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regarded as a lateral crater of the Vatna, and, he doubted not, had they 

 been favoured with better weather, he should have found many other 

 eruptive rents ; but so rapid was the accumulation of snow upon the 

 Vatna, and so bad a conductor of heat were all volcanic eruptions, that 

 traces of volcanic eruption were very soon obliterated. As might be 

 supposed, such a prodigious accumulation of ice and snow as the Vatna 

 JokuU produced a very sensible and marked effect upon the climate of 

 certain parts of Iceland. It had this effect — it deluged the country to 

 the south of it with rain, and gave to those districts which lie to the 

 north of it a happier climate than they would otherwise possess. The 

 snowy heights of the Vatna attracted to themselves the aqueous 

 vapours which travelled northwards from more southern latitudes, 

 depositing them upon their broad shoulders in the form of snow and 

 hail, and refrigerating and drying the vapours which travelled across 

 their snows, thus rendering the south wind a wet one in the country to 

 the south of the Vatna and the north wind a dry one, whilst in those 

 districts which lie to the north of it the reverse was the case. And 

 since by far the greater part of the aqueous vapours which reached 

 Iceland was borne thither from the more readily evaporating waters of 

 southern oceans by that bugbear to travellers in the south of Iceland — 

 the southerly wind— they saw at once why the snow line was lower 

 upon the south than the north of the Vatna Jokull. When they 

 inspected the glaciers which fringed the south of the Vatna Jokull, 

 they found they had decidedly advanced ; indeed, at one point, so 

 much so, as to almost destroy communication along that part of the 

 south shore. Upon the north they found that a huge tongue of glacier 

 had flowed down full ten or twelve miles beyond the utmost limit 

 assigned to it lay Gunlaugson some 40 years ago, while the route 

 traversed by that enterprising man was completely overrun by the ice, 

 and the traditionary road of the Vatna Jokull's-vorgr was now amongst 

 the high snows of the Vatna. 



Icelanders, as a rule, were loth to admit the advance of their 

 glaciers, and vainly appealed to striated rock at much lower altitudes 

 than most of the Icelandic glaciers of the present day, and to moraines 

 stranded upon the plains beneath some of the principal mountain 

 sections, but since it was impossible to say when these rocks were 

 scratched, or even whether the very rocks to whose striae they so 

 confidently point were not erupted long before Northern Europe and 

 America disappeared beneath the ice and snow of the earlier glacial 



