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THE VOLCANOES OF ICELAND. BY TEMPEST ANDERSON, M.D., B.SC. 
The author visited Iceland in the summer of 1890, with the 
especial object of examining and photographing the volcanic pheno- 
mena with which the country abounds. 
Iceland is an island about the size of Ireland, situated just out- 
side the arctic circle. The inhabited, or habitable, portion is con- 
fined to a narrow belt round the shore, the centre portion being occu- 
pied by volcanic mountains, extensive lava deserts, sandy plains, and 
snow mountains mostly flat-topped, called "Jokuls." The interior 
is traversed by a few desert tracks, seldom used, and becoming less 
so since the establishment of a regular service of steamers round the 
north coast. The north coast is much broken up into promontories 
and fjords, or deep bays, at the ends of which most of the villages — 
they scarcely deserve the name of towns— are situated. The south 
coast, on the contrary, does not boast a single harbour where a 
steamer can lie in safety, between Reykjavik and Hafnafjord on the 
west, and Berufjord on the east, for, though it is true that the small 
trading station of Eyra Bakki is situated here, and small sailing- 
vessels find some shelter from the Atlantic swell behind a reef of 
rocks, the entrance is narrow and dangerous for any ordinary craft 
in which a landsman would like to trust himself. Add to this, that 
many large rivers, quite disproportionate to the size of the island, 
come from the desert interior and here flow into the sea ; that they 
are mostly broad, swift, and icy cold, and often with quicksands in 
their bottoms ; and we see at once the reason that this part of the 
island is seldom visited by travellers, and that the inhabitants enjoy 
fewer of the necessities, to say nothing of the luxuries of life than in 
other parts. Yet in this part are situated the great volcanoes of 
Kotlugia and Skapta Jokul, which it was the author's object to 
explore on his visit to the island in 1890. 
Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, is a straggling village or small 
town of 2,500 inhabitants. The chief buildings are the governor's 
house, a plain whitewashed building apparently of about a dozen 
small rooms, a Church or Cathedral, also whitewashed, capable of 
