my tent, and was treated with the usual Icelandic hospitality. On Tuesday, the 20th of September, I started at an early hour, in order to finish the last stage of my journey for the present season. From Breidabolstad, the road runs in a northerly direction, and leads, all at once, into one of the most gloomy and inhospitable regions I had yet traversed. It forms part of the long range of irregular and shapeless mountains, which stretches the whole way from Thingval lavatn to Cape Reykianess; and which partly owes its origin to the awful effects of subterraneous fire, and has partly been overturned during subsequent convulsions. Beds of lava lie scattered here in every direction; and I found it no easy matter to elude the cracks and fissures which every now and then opened into the road. Having traversed the lava for some time, my attention was attracted by a number of craters to the right, which are known by the name of Trölladyngiar, or "Magic Heaps." They are mostly of a conic form, and hollow within, and are covered with red slag, the last effects of subterraneous heat. It was from this tract that the famous eruption of A. D. 1000 proceeded; while the national assembly was deliberating whether the Christian religion should be adopted or not, and which gave rise to the well-known argument of Snorri Godi. * According to the statement of Bishop Gisle Oddson, in his Collect. MSS. ad Hist. Nat. another eruption took place in 1340; † and, indeed the place bears every mark of reiterated devastation. Just before leaving this singularly wild desert, I was surprised by a fine flock of rein-deer, marching slowly down the side of a mountain close beside me. They were more than fifty in number, and were under the guidance of a noble stag, who led the van, and every now and then turned round to look at me, and inspect the state of his troops. "Nor yet appear his care and conduct small; Page 12. + Olafsen og Povelsen, p. 74. What is said of the wild ass, may equally apply to the stag: "Whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings. The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing." Job xxxviii. 6, 8. It was in these mountains, that three rein-deer were introduced from Lapland, in the year 1770, and they have now multiplied to that degree, that they form numerous herds, and subsist on the moss, which grows plentifully in this quarter. It is but seldom that any of them are killed, the inhabitants suffering them to remain in quiet possession of these desolate regions. They appeared much tamer than I should have supposed, and allowed me to ride within half a gun-shot of them, before they mended their pace. At the termination of the lava I descended by a very precipitous path into a deep gulley, the bottom of which was covered with slags and volcanic sand, and, extricating myself by a pass, the sides of which exhibited huge masses of tuffa, I entered a vast plain entirely overrun with lavas, the various ages of which were not only visible from the streams which had successively been heaped above each other, but also from their colour, and the greater or less quantity of soil which is here and there attached to their surface. After a very fatiguing ride, I came to the Trölla-börn, or " Giants Children," a number of minute, but singularly interesting volcanic chimnies, which have been formed by the cooling of the lava. They are from five to eight feet in height, and the largest may be twenty feet around the base. They are all hollow within; most of them domed, and presenting more or less of a lateral opening through which the melted substances have obtained a fresh vent. The lava is strongly vitrified, and its colour varies from a black to a light_green. The outside of the dome exhibits a slaty appearance, resembling the scales of a fish, while it is hung within with the most beautiful stalactites. Some of these craters serve for sheep-pens; and in one of them I discovered a hard bed of lava, which is used by those who traverse this tract in winter. I had no sooner quitted this interesting spot, than I recognised the Esian and other mountains to the north east of Reykiavik. I now applied for the last time to my stock of provisions, and leaving my servant to bring up the baggage-horses at his leisure, I rode on to Reykiavik, where I arrived about five o'clock in the afternoon, after an absence of fifty-eight days, and performing a journey of more than 1200 British miles. CHAP. IX. Winter in Iceland-Climate-Greenland ice-Aurora Borealis-Travelling-Occupations in general-Winter employments-Fishery-Manner in which the Icelanders spend the long evenings-Family devotion-EducationBessastad school-Solitude of Winter-Tone of Society at Reykiavik. THO HOUGH this island occupies a more southerly latitude, and presents, on the whole, a much greater extent of vegetation than the adjacent continent, it has nevertheless been unfortunately doomed to bear the repulsive name of Iceland, while the other has been favoured with the pleasing and animating appellation of Greenland. The imposition of these names was wholly arbitrary, according to the accidental circumstances of the individuals with whom they originated. Floki, the third adventurer to Iceland, happening to ascend one of the mountains in the western peninsula, discovered a bay completely filled with Greenland ice, and therefore thought himself entitled to change the name given to the island by his predecessors, to that which it has ever since retained. The consequence has been, that the generality of those who inhabit more genial climes, have viewed it as equally inhospitable with the most rigid of the polar regions, and considered the natives as exposed to all the benumbing influence of relentless frosts, and perpetually immersed in ice and snow. This, however, is far from being the case. The climate is perhaps more unsettled, but it is very seldom that the cold is more intense than in the south of Scandinavia. At first, I confess, I shuddered at the idea of spending a winter in Iceland; but what was my surprise when I found the tem-` perature of the atmosphere not only greater than that of the T preceding winter in Denmark, but equal to that of the mildest I have lived either in Denmark or Sweden ! In the month of November, the mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer did not sink lower than 20°, and it was nearly as often above the freezing point as below it. On the 6th of December, with clear weather and a light breeze from the east-north-east, it sunk to 8° 30′, after which, especially towards the end of the year, the weather became remarkably mild, and continued in this state till near the middle of January; the thermometer for the most part between 34° and 40°. On the 10th and 11th of January it fell as low as 15° 30'", but rose again in a short time, and continued much more frequently above than below the point of congelation till the 7th of March, when we had a strong wind from the N. N. W., and the mercury, which had stood the preceding day between 30° and 34°, sunk in the morning to 9° 30", at noon to 8°, and at 9 o'clock in the evening it fell as low as 4o 30', which was the strongest degree of frost we had the whole winter. The following evening it was at 6°; on the 9th it rose to 10°; on the 10th to 19°; and so on till the 13th, when it got again to 32°, and continued for the most part above it the whole of the month. On the 12th of April it fell to 19°, but otherwise kept varying between 32o and 52°. About the middle of May the atmosphere grew colder, occasioned most probably by the approach of some masses of Greenland ice, and on the 18th and several of the following days the mercury was at 29°. The quantity of snow that fell during the winter was very considerable, especially in the northern parts of the island, where many of the peasants were reduced to circumstances of great distress, by the total consumption of the fodder they had provided for their cattle. The atmosphere was on the whole rather clear and serene, than darkened by mists, which is in a great measure to be ascribed to the prevalence of brisk land winds, to which the mountainous nature of the country is extremely favourable. It must, at the same time, be allowed, that the winter of 1814, as well as that which immediately preceded it, was |