ICELAND. 



69 



light on green valleys and crystal lakes, on the purple hills or snow-capped 

 mountains rising in Alpine grandeur above the distant horizon, and the stran- 

 ger might almost be tempted to exclaim with her patriotic sons, " Iceland is the 

 best land under the sun." That it is one of the most interesting — ^through its 

 history, its inhabitants, and, above all, its natural curiosities — no one can doubt. 

 It has all that can please and fascinate the poet, the artist, the geologist, or the 

 historian ; the prosaic utilitarian alone, accustomed to value a country merely 

 by its productions, might turn with some contempt from a land without corn, 

 without forests, without mineral riches, and covered for about two-thirds of its 

 surface with bogs, lava-wastes, and glaciers. 



The curse of sterility rests chiefly on the south-eastern and central parts of 

 the island. Here nothing is to be seen but deserts of volcanic stone or im- 

 mense ice-fields, the largest of which — the Klofa Jokul — alone extends over 

 more than 4000 square miles. The interior of this vast region of neve and 

 glacier is totally unknown. The highest peaks, the most dreadful volcanoes of 

 the island, rise on the southern and south-western borders of this hitherto inac- 

 cessible waste ; the Oraefa looking down from a height of 6000 feet upon all 

 its rivals — the Skaptar, a name of dreadful significance in the annals of Iceland, 

 and farther on, like the advanced guards of this host of slumbering fires, the 

 Katla, the Myrdal, the Eyjafjalla, and the Hecla, the most renowned, though 

 not the most terrible, of all the volcanoes of Iceland. 



As the ice-fields of this northern island far surpass in magnitude those of 

 the Alps, so also the lava-streams of ^tna or Vesuvius are insignificant when 

 compared with the enormous masses of molten stone which at various periods 

 have issued from the craters of Iceland. From Mount Skjaldebreith, on both 

 sides of the lake of Thingvalla as far as Cape Reykjanes, the traveller sees an 

 uninterrupted lava-field more than sixty miles long, and frequently from twelve 

 to fifteen broad ; and lava-streams of still more gigantic proportions exist in 

 many other parts of the island, particularly in the interior. In general, these 

 lava-streams have cooled down into the most fantastic forms imaginable. " It 

 is hardly possible," says Mr. Holland, " to give any idea of the general appear- 

 ance of these once molten masses. Here a great crag has toppled over into 

 some deep crevasse, there a huge mass has been upheaved above the fiery 

 stream which has seethed and boiled around its base. Here is every shape 

 and figure that sculpture could design or imagination picture, jumbled to- 

 gether in grotesque confusion, whilst everywhere myriads of horrid spikes and 

 sharp shapeless irregularities bristle amidst them." 



By the eruptions of the Icelandic volcanoes many a fair meadow-land has 

 been converted into a stony wilderness ; but if the subterranean fires have fre- 

 quently brought ruin and desolation over the island, they have also endowed it 

 with many natural wonders. 



In the " burning mountains " of Krisuvik, on the south-western coast, a 

 whole hill-slope, with a deep narrow gorge at its foot, is covered with innumer- 

 able boiling springs and fumaroles, whose dense exhalations, spreading an in- 

 tolerable stench, issue out of the earth with a hissing noise, and completely hide 

 the view. 



