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INTRODUCTION. 
In nothing do the Icelanders excel so much 
as in the curing of the cod-fish, which is of the 
best kind; so that if the fisheries were properly 
conducted they might prove a source of inex¬ 
haustible wealth to the island; for fish from 
that country always sells at a much higher rate 
than what comes from either Newfoundland or 
Norway. 
Of the amount of the population of Iceland in 
early times I am ignorant, except as far as some 
sort of estimate may be made from what is men¬ 
tioned by Arngrim Jonas*, that four hundred 
people paid tribute in the year 1090; but in this 
number neither women, children, nor poor were 
included. In the fourteenth century a dreadful 
malady^ called the sorte dod, or black death, is 
reported to have swept away almost every inha¬ 
bitant from off the island; so that, comprehensive 
as are the annals of Iceland, this circumstance is 
omitted in them, and it is thence inferred that no 
person of ability survived to record it. The years 
1697* 1698, and 1699 were remarkable for the 
mortality caused by famine, and the year 1707 
for the destruction of twenty thousand inhabitants 
by the small-pox; yet ip J 7^3 Horrebow esti- 
¥ Arngrim Jonee Brev. Comment, de Islandi&, 
f Horrebow. 
