39 game at the meetings of the people was bat and ball or cricket which was often played on the ice. Dancing was also indulged in and as the places where dances could be held were few, the churches were used for the purpose. This naturally produced in later days a scandal and the church party objected so strongly, that the historic song- dance of the Icelander fell into disuse and is lost. Although so superstitious it must not be thought the Icelanders were wanting in intellect ; even from the first infancy of the republic we find them endowed with an amount of intellectual energy hardly to be expected in so secluded a community, but whilst Europe was for centuries disturbed by sanguinary wars and political con- vulsions, these islanders devoted their long winter nights to improving the mind. There while an almost perpetual night covered the wastes of this fire-burnt-land, and the waves of a storm tossed ocean thundered against its desolate shores, these islanders created for themselves a native literature. Although in Britain and elsewhere bookmaking was entirely confined to the monks and merely consisted in the compilation of a series of bald annals locked up in Latin, here in this far away lonely land we find the earliest topographical survey with which we are acquainted and the first historical composition ever written by any European in the vernacular, produced by Iceland genius

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