SKAPTA. 
Ill 
Toward the end of May, a light bluish fog began 
to float along the confines of the untrodden tracts 
of Skapta, accompanied in the beginning of June by 
a great trembling of the earth. On the 8th of that 
month, immense pillars of smoke collected over the 
hill country towards the north, and coming down 
against the wind in a southerly direction, enveloped 
the whole district of Sida in darkness. A whirlwind 
of ashes then swept over the face of the country, and 
on the 10th, innumerable fire spouts were seen leaping 
and flaring amid the icy hollows of the mountain, while 
the river Skapta, one of the largest in the island, having 
first rolled down to the plain a vast volume of fetid 
waters mixed with sand, suddenly disappeared. 
Two days afterwards a stream of lava, issuing from 
sources to which no one has ever been able to penetrate, 
came sliding down the bed of the dried up river, and 
in a little time,—though the channel was six hundred 
feet deep and two hundred broad,—the glowing deluge 
overflowed its banks, crossed the low country of 
Medalland, ripping the turf up before it like a table¬ 
cloth, and poured into a great lake, whose affrighted 
waters flew hissing and screaming into the air at 
