FENXELL : SOME PHYSICAL FEATURES IN ICELAND. 451 
The north-west corner of Iceland is a peninsula of very 
considerable area, connected with the main land by a very narrow 
neck of land some four English miles in width, and on this 
portion of the coast we see the grand basalt and lava hills of 
3,000 feet in height, with fjords of all sizes from the parent 
Isafjord, witli its wide entrance ten miles across and which finds 
its way inland for 40 miles, to the smaller fjords, which again 
have their branch valleys, each with their stream and tributary 
torrents rushing down the mountain side, which valleys frequently 
descend from a snow-capped mountain or jokull, and that the 
dividing hills between these branch valleys have in their turn 
to give way to the all-powerful denuding influences of frost and 
sea, wind and storm. 
One can easily understand from this object lesson how those 
peculiar looking islands at the F?erc)es, such as Naalso and 
Kalso, were formed, and which now appear as long, narrow 
mountain ranges coming out of the sea. A little more subsidence 
of the land and we should have a very similar group of islands 
formed out of this Xorth West Peninsula of Iceland. 
It may interest some to hear that the magnetic needle is 
so much affected off some parts of the mainland that it cannot 
be relied on as a guide to the navigator. 
The most northerly point of Iceland is the edge of a large 
low-lying plain of pre-glacial lava many square miles in extent. 
2. — The Characteristic " Tussocky " Condition of Large 
Surface Areas. 
This feature of the country is, owing to its great peculiarity, 
one of the first things to attract the attention of the traveller, 
especially if a long ride or walk is made over this rough surface. 
The appearance has been likened to that of a country churchyard 
without the tombstones, and if every mound were cut into two 
or three tussocks it would certainly enable you to realise the 
most common feature in the Icelandic scenery where there is 
any vegetation at all. 
