Account of a Volcanic Eruption in Iceland. 429 
immediately followed by any eruption of the volcanoes in Italy, 
excited apprehensions of violent voleanic phenomena in Iceland; 
and in the month of March, letters were received in Copenhagen 
from which the following account is drawn up. 
In the beginning of the month of September, the frost began 
on the east coast, and on the east part of the north const of 
Iceland, with a violence that was quite unexpected after the ex- 
perience of the preceding years. An amazing quantity of snow 
fell, and the Greenland ice surrounded the whole east and north 
coast, accompanied as usual by continual snow and frost. It was 
‘remarkable that the fine weather continued on the south coast 
of the island till the beginning of November, the lowest state of 
the thermometer at, Ness, near Reikiavig, being on the 23d and 
24th of September =41° Fahr. On the 19th of October it sud- 
denly fell to 23° Fahr., which lasted, however, only for one day, 
and before and after that time the temperature of the atmosphere 
was constantly above the freezing point, until on the first of 
November, when constant frost began. 
The island, though frequently alarmed by earthquakes, had 
experienced no volcanic eruption since that famous one of 1783 
and 1784 fiom the Skaptaa-Jokkul, which destroyed such a great 
part of the cultivated lands, except some small eruptions which 
were said to have taken place in the interior, far from the inha- 
bited part of the island, and which passed away without attract- 
ing further notice, when in December 1821, a new crater was 
suddenly formed on the Eyafjeld-Jokkul, a mountain of which, 
among the numerous volcanic eruptions, only a single one is 
mentioned, in the year 1612, when a great part of the ice of the 
mountain burst, and was thrown into the sea. 
The Eyafjeld-Jokkul (known among sailors under the name 
of Cape Hekla) is the highest of all the mountains in Iceland ; 
and, according to the last measurements, is 5666 feet high. It 
is the southernmost of the chain of mountains in which the dread- 
ful eruptions in the middle of the last century took place, and at 
about equal distances from the Kolla and Hekla. From 1024 to 
1766, twenty-four eruptions are recorded to have occurred. 
That part of the mountain where the crater was formed borders 
two sides the cultivated land, which belongs to the hundred 
(Syssel) of Rangarvalla, in the south part of the island. 
The following account is an extract of a letter from M. Bry- 
niulo Sivertsen, Minister at Holt, in Eiafields-boigden, to the 
Bishop of Iceland, M. Vidalin:—* The real crater is about five 
miles from my house at Holt. ‘The fire made its way suddenly 
by throwing off the thick mass of ice which scarcely ever melts, 
and of which, one mass, 18 feet high, and 20 fathoms in circum- 
ference, 
