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are: Chapman, a good English word, signifying merchant; gill, a narrow glen; fell, a mountain ; byre, a farm; bonder, a farmer; to busk, with its past participle, boune, to make ready; hight, called.

With regard to my fellow-travellers, I have so altered their names and the incidents related of them, as to prevent the possibility of their identification.

Finally, my thanks are due to my friend, Mr. G. G. Fowler, for much information with regard to Icelandic birds, and especially to Mr. Alfred Newton for his invaluable paper on the ornithology of the island, inserted in my Appendix; also to Mr. W. Boyd and Mr. W. Ardley for their harmonies to the Icelandic melodies I brought home with me.

SABINE BARING-GOULD.

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Isa fjord

INTRODUCTION.

phical and

ICELAND lies just south of the Arctic circle, touching it in the Geogra north. It is situated between lat. 63° 25′ and 66° 30' north, physical and long. 13° 38′ and 24° 40' west.

The shape is peculiar. It is that of an irregular ellipse, with a considerable excrescence in the north-west, which is united to the mainland by a neck only 4 miles across at the narrowest part.

The island is one-fifth larger than Ireland, and contains about 37,000 square miles. Its greatest length is 308 English miles, and greatest breadth 190. It is deeply indented with fjords on all sides except the south. It owes its upheaval entirely to volcanic agency, and is composed exclusively of igneous rocks.

The interior of the island consists of an elevated band of Palagonite tuff, pierced by trachyte veins; on either side of this formation is basalt. It has been generally held that the island was traversed by a broad trachytic valley, hemmed in between chains of trap mountains; but this view is erroneous. Instead of a vale, we have the great jökulls of the centre formed of tufa, and only the fells and smaller ice-mountains on the north coast composed of basalt.

The mountain system is in the south, and takes the shape of a triangle, having for base a line drawn from Ók to Eyjafjalla, and for apex, Thrándar jökull, which towers above the Beru-fjord. A glance at the map would convey the idea that extensive plains occupied the area of the lower portion of this triangle, but such is not the case. The space intervening between Blá-fell, Hekla, Torfa jökull, and the vast ice regions of Hofs and Vatna jökulls is, in fact, occupied by ground rising gradually in rolling sweeps, till it meets the snows of Skapta. Towards the apex of the triangle, the glacier mountains form a compact mass called Vatna, or Klofa jökull, covering an area of 3,500 square miles of unexplored snow recesses. North of this triangular mountain system is a triangular elevated plain, with the

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features.

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