45 
of Edinburgh, Session 1875-76. 
The accompanying maps, prepared for my forthcoming volume, 
(“ Ultima Thule ”), mark the four paroxysmal eruptions which 
took place upon the same area during 1867, 1869, 1870 (to 1872, 
at which last date all activity had subsided), and about Christmas 
1874. Number five, the latest phenomenon, broke out on March 
29, 1875. 
These movements may or may not be connected with the five 
days’ eruption of Skaptar Jokull (January 9, 1873), recorded by 
all the journals of Europe ; but they certainly occupy the heart 
and the southern outskirts of the Od&fta Hraun, the great lava field 
subtending the north of the Yatna Jokull, and extending to the 
N.N.E., almost as far as the Lake Region — My-vatn and its 
oasis. The name is variously translated “Terrible wilderness” 
(Henderson), and “ Desert of the Evil Deed ” (Baring Gould), 
whilst the area is differently calculated at 1160 to 1500 square 
miles; in fact, one half of the Yatna Jokull. Viewed from the 
nearest heights — Bl&fjall, for instance — it is a grim and ghastly 
picture, a region of ruin and desolation, a fitting mise en scene for 
the Last Man : my companions remarked that such a spectacle 
would soon give them the horrors. I see no difficulty beyond a 
certain expense in crossing and exploring this waste: at the same 
time, I doubt that the feat would yield any results ; and explora- 
tion purely for * exploring appears to me like “climbing for 
climb.” 
This “ great and terrible wilderness,” so small and mean in com- 
parison with the Sahras of Africa, Asia, and South America, and 
yet so grisly in its brown-black desolation, is supposed by Baring 
Gould to be the gift of the Trolladyngjur and of HerSubreifc, while 
Mr W. L. Watts would derive it solely from SkjaldbreiS. I find it 
to be the produce of a multitude of craters which opened in and 
south of it, before the days when Qraefi and other lofty peaks, 
attracting rain and snow, built up the mighty neve , which mono- 
polises the south-eastern corner of Iceland. The peculiarity of the 
latest outbreaks (1867-1875) is the distance, not to say isolation, 
of the vents from any large body of water, suggesting the un- 
pleasant fact that we must modify received opinion. For instance, 
the eruption of Christmas 1874 upon the south-eastern flank of the 
distorted horseshoe Askja (oval-shaped wooden casket) or Dyng- 
