284 On the Glaciers and Climate of Iceland. 



by the advancing cultivation and the rapidly increasing popu- 

 lation of North America, especially of the districts through 

 which that river flows. Still, however, the middle of the 

 north-eastern branch of the Gulf Stream sometimes carries 

 a considerable quantity of drift-wood, which is not unfre- 

 quently cast ashore on the Feroe Islands. Captain Irminger 

 found, in the year 1844, on the sti'and of Kirkeboe, the 

 southern point of Stromoe, a great quantity of trunks of trees, 

 which had been drifted thither. Some of these were of large 

 size ; and they were partly cut up into planks and boards, 

 and were partly used for beams. I myself, dui'ing my stay 

 in Husavik, observed a trunk of a pine-tree more than thirty 

 feet long, and proportionately thick, which had been picked up 

 in the vicinity of Feroe, by a ship coming from Copenhagen, 

 and which was conveyed to Iceland for sale. All the other 

 drift-wood which I had the opportunity of seeing on the coasts 

 of Iceland, especially on the north and east sides, consisted 

 merely of branches or thin stems, and was unsuitable for 

 building purposes, and only fit for fire-wood. The drift-wood, 

 on its long passage through the ocean, loses its bark, and is 

 so much bleached by the air, that its surface receives a 

 whitish-grey appearance. Its internal structure, however, 

 shews that it belongs at least to two different kinds of trees, 

 distinguishable from one another by a white and a reddish 

 colour of their wood. 



In the Northern Ocean, besides, almost everywhere along 

 the northern coasts of Siberia, drift-wood is found heaped 

 up, and sometimes in immense masses. This, like the drift- 

 wood of Feroe, is used by the inhabitants of the adjacent 

 country in building and for fire-wood. The coasts, from the 

 mouths of the Lena to Cape Schetagkoy, are especially rich 

 in this drift-wood ; and among it there are everywhei'e to be 

 found ti'unks and branches of pines, firs, larches, and poplars. 

 Although the great rivers of Northern Asia in the vicinity of 

 their mouths flow through a wilderness destitute of trees, yet 

 it is known that they hold their course, a little farther towards 

 the south, through impenetrable forests, which usually extend 

 northward to the 70th degree of latitude, and in some places 

 even extend bevond this limit. 



