296 On the Glaciers and Climate of Iceland. 



a rock ; while, by holding their mountain sticks upwards, and 

 giving them a rotatory motion, they secure to themselves 

 the access of air, and heap up the snow around themselves 

 as a defence. 



At this season of the year, for five or six months in the 

 south, and for seven or eight in the north, a thick coating of 

 snow covers, from the highest hills down to the sea, this un- 

 inhabited wilderness ; out of which no tree, no bush, no blade 

 of grass arises ; but only here and there a black cliff, cover- 

 ed over with grey lichens, projects, lonely and disconsolate. 



The reindeer* is now the sole occupant of the wilderness 

 in the interior of the island, and there it subsists by scraping 

 up the snow to find its hidden food ; while great flocks of 

 sea-birds, in the short, misty days, I'ocking themselves in the 

 storm, with svild cries, swarm about the coast. With the 

 closing-in of the night, the magic play of the northern lights 

 then begins. These, in varying colours, and trembling beams, 

 — one time glimmering, another shining brightly, — spread 

 over the starry firmament, and exhibit, with indistinct out- 

 lines, the rocks and the rigid fields of ice. 



While Nature thus, in majestic greatness, follows her ever- 

 lasting, immutable laws, man succumbs to their sway in the 

 remote north ; and it is, indeed, wonderful that he loves his 

 native country, with its dismal sky and barren soil. 



After a winter of half a year's duration, the spring begins 

 at the end of April, in the south of Iceland, whei'e all the 

 snow has usually disappeared from the low lands by that 

 time, although, in the north country, it remains considerably 

 longer. When we landed at Reykjavik, in the middle of May, 

 the snow was ali'eady melted away throughout the whole 

 south of Iceland, and the young grass was advancing in its 

 growth. 



* The reindeer was introduced from Norway into Iceland in the last cen- 

 tury, and the individuals of this species have since become so numerous, that 

 entire herds of them are now to be met with. The Icelanders derive less be- 

 nefit, however, from this animal than the inhabitants of Finmark, because they 

 have not learned to rear it up in a domestic state. From their disposition also 

 to keep by old practices, they believe that, on the whole, they have been more 

 injured than benefited by the introduction of the reindeer. 



