Iviii 
INTRODUCTION. 
south coast, which is by no means an usual ciiv 
cum stance. 
The northern part of the island is, as may be 
concluded, exposed to much more severe weather 
than the southern*. Vegetation is scanty, and 
the herbage difficult to be dried for hay. The 
quantity of floating ice driven by the westerly 
and north-westerly winds from the coast of 
Greenland is prodigious, and not only fills all 
the bays, but covers the sea to that extent 
from the shore that the eye cannot trace its 
boundary from the highest summit of the moun¬ 
tains. These masses of ice, known by the name 
of ice-islands, are so large that a body of sixty 
or eighty fathoms in thickness is sunk below the 
level of the water, and a height of many toises 
rises above it. Their motion is rapid, and they 
are often driven together by the sea with so tre¬ 
mendous a crash that the report is heard at an 
immense distance, and with such force, that, 
according to Povelsen and Olafsen, the pieces 
of float-wood that they bring with them have 
been known to take fire, in consequence of the 
friction. It is a singular fact, that so long as these 
ice-islands continue floating about in the ocean, 
the weather is fickle and stormy, and the cur- 
* Voyage en Islande. 
