· person o of powerful muscle could shake the whole structure to pieces in less than a quarter of an hour. Alighting from my horse, I went to the bridge, and, after having looked a minute or two, into the profound chasm, through which the light brown torrent rolled and boiled with the most tremendous fury, I took 'hold of the ledges, and shook the bridge with the utmost ease."

Some miles further up, there is another mode of crossing this river, called by the natives at fara á Kláfa, which is still more terrific. Two ropes are suspended from the edge of the precipice on either side, on which a basket or wooden box is hung, sufficiently large to contain a man and an ordinary horse-burden. Into this box the traveller must descend, and puil himself by means of a rope over the yawning abyss while, owing to the looseness of the main ropes, the box sinks with rapidity till it reaches the middle, and threatens, by the sudden stop it there makes, to dislodge its contents into the flood. The principal danger, however, attends the passage of the horses. They are driven into the river a little higher up; and, if they do not swim to a certain point, formed by a projection of the rock, they are precipitated over a dreadful cartaract, and seen no more. If measures be not soon taken to repair the bridge, the Klâfa, dangerous as it is, will be the only means of conveyance over the Yokul river.'

At the end of the next stage, he was surprised by a phenomenon, most extremely rare, it should seem, in any part of the Island, at least any part at a distance from Reykiavik,-a depraved profane family, whose conduct had been so irregular and offensive as to incur, from the Sysselman's court, a sentence of corporal punishment on the younger members, and a considerable fine on the parents. The account of what was seen, and afterwards learnt, of this household, exhibits nothing that would produce any excess of surprise if related of an English family, excepting perhaps the share of mental faculty implied in some of their modes of mischief. And how delighted must Dr. H. have been to be able to say, The character they exhibited was in perfect contrast to any I had hitherto observed in Iceland,' if he could forget in what country, it was that he was to publish the description!

Various rich and beautiful subjects of the mineral kingdom were displayed in great profusion, at different places in the progress. At the factory of Diupavog, the most southerly harbour on the east coast, Dr. H. found a pretty voluminous circulating library.' The noblest mountain scenery was continually appearing and changing, on his view. A magnificent cascade, of the depth of 140 yards, augmented the sense of danger in a pass which at first sight appeared insuperable. A torrent from the icy mountains, running in thirty channels, several of them a hundred yards broad, and taking the horses up to the middle, was, contrary to the advice of the clergyman

in the neighbourhood, forded in haste, for fear that delay should render it quite impassable. Most of this clergyman's auditory had always this flood to cross to attend Divine service, an adventure of very great management and dexterity when it is crowded with floating masses of ice.

Sometimes they are so numerous, and follow each other in such close succession, that the river cannot be forded at all on horseback; it being impossible to turn the horse with the agility requisite in order to elude them. The passenger is then obliged to wade, at the risk of his life. Sira Berg (the clergyman) informed me that being once called to visit a dying parishioner, he went over in this way, though, at times, the water took him up to the breast. He had provided himself with a long pole, in order to examine the ground at every step; while he had to look around him, with the utmost alertness, lest fresh masses of ice should overtake him, bear him down before them, and, forcing him upon other pieces, cut him asunder.'

This worthy pastor received the present of a Bible, and welcomed the prospect of a larger supply for his people, with a joy proportioned to the fact, that he had been endeavouring to procure a copy for his own use these seventeen years past; but had at last given up all hope of ever obtaining the trea 'sure.'

From an eminence of the coast a little way beyond this stream, Dr. H. contemplated a panorama which he pronounces the most novel, magnificent, and unbounded that he ever beheld.' Its termination to the west was, the Oraefa Yokul, the highest mountain in Iceland. The view of this expanded sublimity was followed by the spectacle of a prodigious natural colonnade, partly erect, and partly in ruin, and strongly sug gesting the image, on a great scale, of the dilapidated structures of ancient Greece.

Passing some wild ruins of dilapidated mountains, and a plain once well inhabited, but now a scene of gloomy desolation, in consequence of dreadful floods from the glaciers by which it is environed, our Author came to a spot of which he had been warned by Captain Scheel, as the most formidable to the traveller of any in the island, the passage of the torrent of Breidamark Yokul. The danger of this passage is heightened into sublimity by the most strange and magnificent character of the whole locality. At a short distance from the sea, a mountain consisting wholly of ice, stands across, and blocks up, a wide valley which extends considerably back between the icy mountains. A powerful stream, descending from these mountains, has to force its way through this enormous bulwark of ice: But we shall do best to transcribe Dr. H.'s description:

"The position and origin of this Yokul are quite peculiar. It is

not so much a mountain as an immense field of ice, about twenty miles in length, fifteen in breadth, and rising, at its greatest elevation, to the height of about four hundred feet above the level of the sand. The whole of the space it occupies has originally been a beautiful and fertile plain, which continued to be inhabited for several centuries after the occupation of the island; but was desolated in the dire catastrophe which happened in the fourteenth century, when not fewer than six volcanos were in action at the same time, and poured inconceivable destruction to the distance of near a hundred miles along the coast. While the snow-mountains, in the interior, have been discharging their waters through this level tract, vast masses of ice must have been carried down by the floods, some of which, being arrested in their progress, have settled on the plain, and obstructing the pieces which followed, they have gradually accumulated, till, at last, the fresh masses that were carried to either side by the current, have reached the adjacent mountains, and the water, not having any other passage, has forced its way through the chasms in the ice, and formed channels, which, with more or less variation, it may have filled to the present period.'

The most marvellous fact of all is, that this enormous mass of ice is actually in motion toward the sea, from which it was, fifty years since, at the distance of five miles, according to the statement of respectable travellers, whereas the distance did not appear to Dr. H. to exceed one mile; and he observed that at one place it had advanced, plowing, as it were, its way in the sand, so as to pass beyond the line of one part of a track made but eight days before. It is not improbable that one day, under the pressure of an extraordinary accumulation of water behind, a great chasm will be made, by a portion of this vast barrier being disrupted and propelled down to the sea. Or if not, the whole continuous mass will, in no very long time, as Dr. H. remarks, advance to the shore, and leave no way of communication by land between the tracts adjoining to its two extremities. As the case is, the passage is most perilous. The torrent retains, in rushing down to the sea, the violence with which it forces through the mountain of ice. It is continually detaching and carrying down masses of ice. It changes its channel, according to the varying points of its more successful perforation. When our Author advanced to dare the passage, the guide was astonished to find empty the channel in which the main stream had flowed but eight days before. On proceeding forward, however, it was not long before they came to see and hear such a challenge of their courage, as Dr. H. confesses he could not have dared to accept but on the strength of religious considerations. We had not ridden a quarter of a mile ere we were convinced, by its tumultuous roar, and the height of its breakers, 'that the river not only existed, but was as impetuous and dangerous as ever.' In fording it, a self-defensive movement in

stinctively made by our Author's horse, had nearly thrown him off, and the strongest sense of extreme danger attended every step till attaining the opposite bank. Several other branches but little less formidable, were also to be crossed: of one of these, he had not, he says,

gained the bank two minutes when a huge piece of ice, at least thirty feet square, was carried past me with resistless force. The foeming of the flood, the crashing of the stones hurled against one another at the bottom, and the masses of ice which, arrested in their course by some large stones, caused the water to dash over them with fury, produced all together an effect on the mind never to be obliterated."

This transit was made in view of the grand Oraefa Yokul, which extends itself in lower eminences to the sea, while its summit rises, in pure eternal snow, to the height of more than six thousand feet. An interesting extract, descriptive of an ascent to one of its peaks, is given from the manuscript journal of Mr. Paulson, a surgeon, pronounced by Dr. H. the best informed naturalist in the island, and who has traversed inquisitively the greatest part of it, with a special attention to its volcanos, keeping, throughout, an accurate journal, which would form, if published, our Author asserts, a far better description of Iceland than any that has yet appeared. The route along the west, at the base of this noble object, lay, in one part, through a scene of indescribable wildness and desolation, the ruins, literally so, of a lower range of the vast mountain mass, which, in 1862, burst with a dreadful explosion, and com'pletely devastated the coast in the vicinity.'

It was not very far forward to a tract bearing the mighty traces of another tremendous catastrophe, anexudation from the western division of the Oraefa Yokul in the year 1727. Amidst the quaking of the whole mountain and contiguous country, the opening of innumerable chasms, and the eruption of fire, and ashes, and rocks, there were poured down immense torrents of hot water and mud; a glacier, dissolved and loosened at its basis, slid down to the coast; and the tract, as an inhabitable ground, was in great part destroyed. Some of the people, and many of the cattle perished, notwithstanding the warning given by the frightful preceding signs. A letter, in which all this is related by a sensible eye-witness, is given from a work published at Copenhagen. The traveller afterwards passed a low mountain consisting chiefly of ice, and like that of Breidamark, movable on its basis, but unlike in the remarkable circumstance that it alternately advances toward the sea, and recedes. The recession takes place after it has thrown out prodigious temporary torrents from under its foundation; which suggests to Dr. H. a very simple and probable theory of its

movements, namely, that it slides back on an inclined plane, after the escape of the enormous accumulation of water behind, which had propelled it by the pressure, and the forcing of a passage through caverns and under its basis.

A few stages forward brought the adventurer upon the region of intermingled lavas and sections of beautiful pasture ground, in front of the Skaftar Yokul, which is at the distance of, perhaps, fifty miles back from the sea. This Skaftar is the most tremendous name, excepting those within the economy of religion, ever pronounced in Iceland. In the year 1783, this mountain shook, and darkened, and devastated the island with such a dreadful power of volcanic fire as has no recorded parallel. The agency was on so vast a scale, and of so prolonged a duration, that the subterraneous fires of half the globe might have seemed hardly sufficient for the awful phenomena. Yet the mighty element, in drawing together its forces in preparation, could afford, as a slight precursor and omen, a month before, and at the distance of two hundred miles, a submarine explosion, which ejected so immense a quantity of pumice that the surface of the ocean was covered with it to the distance of a hundred and fifty miles, and the spring ships were considerably" impeded in their course. It was in the beginning of July that the operations began, on the predestined ground; they raged with inconceivable power, in all manner of horrible and destructive phenomena, for several months; and the final eruption is said to have been as late as the following February. The awful sounds and concussions, the intense darkness, relieved only, at times, by flames and lightnings, the great rivers transformed into torrents of fire, which were confined but for a short time to these channels, their inundation, on all sides, of tract after tract of the cultivated country, and the dismal rain of ashes and other wolcanic substances over the whole territory,must have appeared to the inhabitants as a premature fulfilment of the Divine predictions of the destruction of the world.

The mountain, as now beheld in its quiescent state, bears the aspect of being dreadfully competent to the recorded operations. Our Author, who saw it at a distance, describes it as consisting of about twenty red conical hills, forming so many emitting furnaces of that awful fire.' And he says, the direction of some of the fiery streams of that eruption, proves the existence of other craters, not within the same landscape. The conflict, of no long duration however, between the torrents of fire and several great rivers, which soon vanished at the presence of the mightier element, must have been transcendently portentous and terrible. The channel of one of these rivers, is described as passing between high rocks, and as being in many places from 400 to 600 feet in depth, and near 200 in breadth.' The lava not only