166 
ANDERSON : THE VOLCANOES OF ICELAND. 
often more, has been wasted. What wonder that the guide always 
prefers to ford if possible. 
The main object of our visit was to examine the great volcanoes 
of Kotugia and the Skapta Jokul, the former of which appears not 
to have been visited this century, while the crater of the latter had, 
we were assured, never been reached since its formation in 1783, 
The crater of Kotugia is a vast fissure situated high up among 
the glaciers of the Myrdals Jokul, and is now so filled with snow and 
ice that our distant view of it did not promise much from a nearer 
inspection. Moreover, the weather being abominable, and the snow 
in bad condition, we were reluctantly compelled to abandon the 
attempt. One peculiarity of the eruptions arises from its position 
under a glacier of snowfield, viz., that when the incandescent gases 
and lava escape, the snow and ice are suddenly melted, and a vast 
outpouring takes place of mingled boiling water, ice, volcanic mud, 
pumice stones and ashes. This rushes with great velocity to the sea, 
devastating everything. We rode across a plain about twenty miles 
wide which marks the track. The last eruption took place in 1866. 
Scarcely a blade of any kind of vegetation has yet begun to appear 
on all this vast area. Certainly the volcano deserves its name of 
Kotugia, the Kettle crater. 
The second main object of our journey was to explore the lava 
fields of the Skapta Jokul, mentioned in all the books on vulcanology 
as being among the largest known. The great eruption of this vol- 
cano in 1783 is well described by Lord DufFerin in his " Letters from 
High Latitudes," and especially by Henderson, a missionary who 
visited the island in 1814, when the facts were fresh in living 
memory. Two great streams of lava issued from the desert interior 
of the island, one descending the valley of the Skapta River, and 
another, that of the Hervisflot, the first being about fifty miles long, 
and the latter perhaps forty. Both appear to have issued from the 
same great fissure on which a line of craters has been thrown up. 
We determined to endeavour to reach the craters by the former 
valley. We slept at the last farm in the valley, and were fortunate 
in obtaining the old farmer as guide. He at once told us that, 
though he had taken several parties of travellers far up the course 
